


Primordial

by Kit_SummerIsle



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Magic, Merformers, Multi, War, humanformers too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-24 16:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8378716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit_SummerIsle/pseuds/Kit_SummerIsle
Summary: Mers are neither legend, nor fabled creatures of lore. They aren’t animals, savages, myth, enchantresses or stupid creatures as they are sometimes described in tales. They are real, one could almost say too real. They do occasionally lure humans into the ocean with amazing voices and strange magic but this fate is neither envied nor sought. Except by a few and in secret.





	1. Land

**Author's Note:**

> It’s not a happy little fic about gorgeous mers falling for gorgeous humans or vice versa in a perfect world of sunshine and rainbows (no disrespect intended for other, amazing fics and authors, especially as they have inspired me to hop on the merformers wagon too!). Well. Mers are gorgeous all right. :-) But overall it’s violent and angsty, hurting and realistic. Yeah, I think if Mers truly lived in Earth’s oceans, this is how we’d all end up - in a war with them. But I will smuggle in a happy(ish) end, because I’m a sucker for those.

“Roddy, no! Don’t you dare to get too close!”

The flaming red-orange haired kid appeared not to hear the shouted warning and ran towards the seaside rocks where they rose over the surrounding land. His equally brightly coloured clothes flopped about him in the sunshine as he scrambled fast up to the top of the dark rocks and ignored his caretaker’s repeated warnings to get down at once or he’d be grounded. The top was strewn with windblown debris caught on the sharp edges and small crevices and a few, valiantly surviving hardy grass clumps dotted it. Oily puddles and straight scars on the rock’ surface showed a once standing structure at one place, but even its foundations were long gone, leaving just a few rusting screws behind. On one side he rocks were hard, blackened, glassy and slick, the hard edges smoothed as though by some great heat. Hot Rod avoided that side very carefully. 

The sea underneath appeared to be angrier than the bright sunshine and the stiff breeze would indicate – huge, dark waves frothed among the boulders and worn rocks and tried to stretch up, reach the top of the ancient rocky outcropping and pull it down, like they already did with so many of its stones, now submerged in the forbidding waters. They couldn’t quite reach the top, where the weather-worn top of the cliffs still stood, but year after year its slopes and foundations were besieged by the hungry sea. In time it would inevitably win and the dark rocks would crumble completely and be swallowed by the gray-green water.

“I’m okay, Sarah! The water cannot reach here!” Hot Rod shouted back.

But it wasn’t to be yet. The flame-coloured youngling approached the edge, crouched, then laid flat on his belly, crawled to the edge, disregarding the sorry state of his clothes and stared intently down into the waters. The dirty, white-grey froth of the crashing waves raging below engulfed the black rocks, filled the small coves and gushed out from hidden channels. There were flashes of green from floating seaweeds and other colours, maybe from fish or crabs or even floating debris, wafting around with the angry currents… the youngling wasn’t sure. Hardly anyone has seen a wild fish for decades and crabs he knew only the cultivated kind, grown in tanks and sold to rich people in the cities. Seafood was something the very old sometimes reminisced fondly and with nostalgia, but for Hot Rod, it was unimaginable. What they grew was sold and provided their meager living. 

“I don’t care, young men, come down right now! It’s not safe out here!”

It wasn’t safe, he knew that. But Hot Rod had always been fascinated by the forbidden sea and its glimpses of life. He loved to see the waves crashing ashore and imagined what it would be like floating on them, jumping into the water and… well, he had no words for some of the fantasies that he sometimes dreamt of. But whenever he could he snuck into the prohibited zone that hugged the coastline and jutted inland just off their town and climbed the ancient rocks there to watch the angry sea below. Usually he could sneak back before his caretaker or the patrol could catch him, but sometimes… all his thoughts scattered as Hot Rod yelled excitedly.

“I see one! There! There’s one, right here!”

His stepmother’s tone changed from exasperated to shrill and frightened in a nanosecond.

“Come back, Hot Rod, right now! They are dangerous!”

“It can’t reach me here! 

“COME DOWN NOW!”

His caretaker sounded so terrified now that Hot Rod couldn’t ignore it any more. Casting a last glance at the whitish-grayish bit he saw moving in the gray water and its dirty foam, he started to back off the cliff. He was fairly sure that it wasn’t debris – it moved just too surely with the currents and avoided the jutting edges of rocks a tad bit too close – and it was just too big to be a fish. Hot Rod had seen a few old books with pictures of fishes but they all appeared to be smaller than this shadowy form in the water. And it was moving just too… deliberate, moving surely in the turbulent waters.

“Coming, coming!”

“Ohh, thank God… for once you actually listening to me!”

Hot Rod made a face while his stepmom still couldn’t see it. Sure he wasn’t the most obedient and dutiful kid, but he knew it was dangerous at the seaside. It was just too fascinating to stay away from it like everyone else did. All too soon, a few moths really and he would be drafted into the seaside patrol anyway and would have to come out here, no matter his caretaker’s worries. All young adults had to do patrol duty before they could go to higher education. And Hot Rod knew that he wasn’t cut out for academics, so with his fascination to the sea, he might just stay in it for good. He cast a last glance back at the top of the foaming waves but whatever was there already disappeared.

“Ohh, Roddy!” Arms caught him and tightened around him like he’d just escaped a great catastrophy “Please don’t give me a heart attack!”

“Sheesh… nothing happened. I just saw one. Probably. Maybe. Or something.”

They started to move towards the town, Hot Rod’s shoulder still held tight by his caretaker. He supposed he was fortunate to get such a caring stepmother, but still she was sometimes just too much. They passed the low wall around the town and went by the covered bit of the river where it flew through the town under its concrete roof – it was gated downstream and strewn with traps of course most people was still afraid to get too close – to reach the part of the town where they lived. 

“Come on. You have to finish your chores. Giving me a scare won’t let you out of those!”

“Great…”

Hot Rod grimaced. Yeah, chores. The ones he shirked because even with the danger, the sea was far more alluring. But now… for the rest of the day he had to clean and tidy and grab the shopping, and tend the crab tanks and his stepmum was always watching him, shouting when he tried to slink away, giving him more work when he neared to the end… until it was evening and even Hot Rod wasn’t so stupid as to go back to the seaside while dark. Mer magic was the strongest in the dark and close to water, this much was a firm knowledge in even young children these days. It was a matter of survival. 

Well, maybe the next day. It would be a school day and if he skived the last lesson, the always boring science one, he could sneak out again and see if the Mer turned up again. Hot Rod was sure that even though he was well above the water, the Mer – if it was really one below – could have cast its magic at him and cause him to fall to his death. Even to jump on his own. It wasn’t like anyone could swim any more, though sometimes, in his dreams Hot Rod itched to feel what it was like water caressing him and being a friend, holding him up and being able to move in it… so if he did not do that, then maybe it wasn’t so savage as most people described Mers. Maybe if he just watched it would not harm him.


	2. Sea

Drift glanced up again carefully but the colourfully dressed human kid was gone from the top of the cliff overhanging the rocky cove he hid in. Good thing, because this way he might safely say in his report that he saw no danger and nothing potentially dangerous either. No matter what the Elders said, humans were mostly okay… at least until they grew up. He could see clearly that the kid was watching the sea with fascination and rapture and not with malicious intent. The black and white Mer floated easily among the raging currents, avoiding the sharper rocks with the ease of long practice and swift movements of his tail and lifted his torso slightly up and out of the water. The sounds of the humans echoing among the rocks grew fainter as they moved back to their place – the dry place as Mers called it, though some had less nice names for it too. 

Drift flopped back and swam out of the rocky cove with the returning current and moved along the shoreline. Not too close, as humans peppered the shallows with nasty traps but he was much better now to avoid such traps or defuse them. Humans thought Mers stupid and the traps were crude, fashioned for animals, not thinking Mers. It was an additional insult and many of the Mer warriors seethed at it. But still, the traps left deep wounds and though Mers ruled the ocean, it was still unwise to bleed into the water. Some sharks and agressive cetaceans still existed and if a pack of them found a wounded Mer alone… 

A memory rose unbidden and gripped him suddenly and the smooth movements became twitchy and jagged, the smooth body tremble with dark remembrance. _He could clearly see the humans shooting into the water, their path of those shots straight and bright with bubbles, looking so deceptively harmless… the bullets coming closer to him, cutting slanted lines into the blue of the sea, caging him in the shallows where he fought frantically to free his tail from the trap he had failed to notice… hands bleeding on the sharp, rusted steel, spreading in a bright red cloud, betraying his position to humans and water dwellers alike… he had cut both his hands deeply on the deliberately crude trap with sharp edges and cruel points and his tail was still held fast by its jagged teeth, tearing the bleeding wound ever larger as he thrashed with the effort to get free… a bullet bit hotly into his shoulder and Drift screamed, then another carved a long, burning line to the other arm… and the black-and-white Mer gathered his last strength and tore free of the trap, leaving shreds of his tailfin there, drawing a thick line of blood behind him like a grim contrail as he dived as deep as the shallow water let him and tried to avoid the bullets coming less and less, losing speed as the distance grew sluggishly… the shredded tail barely moved and his best speed barely passed that of the crabs on the bottom, but he got away and there were no bullets any more, no human shouts and glee seeing his blood taint the waves… on the way home a shark attacked him and Drift was nearly delirious from blood loss and later he couldn’t remember how he managed to kill it, but his forearms had deep teethmarks in them and Ratchet didn’t even yell at him when he arrived back to the tribe…_

Drift shook himself out of the memory and breathed deeply through his gills. The long, jagged scar throbbed on his tail, long healed, but a memento forever to be careful of the traps. Taking a few minutes to compose himself, the black-and-white Mer swam carefully into the river-mouth and grimced as he started to taste the filth humans dumped into it. It was almost a better defense than the gates which he could open or the traps he could avoid – it was foul and dirty and made Mers sick if inhaled for long. Drift put on his filters, but they only stopped the worst of the contaminants, not the taste. Hacking and retching he swam upwards slowly until he heard the humans again. The carrier was chiding her youngling about going to the seaside and the kid was gushing about seeing ‘it’…

Crap. So the kid has seen him and now he couldn’t miss reporting it. Drift cursed himself for being careless, but the rocky cove was one of the very few places with no traps in it and he liked to sometimes sun on one of the flat rocks that got warmed by sunlight. He was a warm-water Mer originally and these waters he lived in now felt permanently cold to him. Sunning was one of the few ways to soak up warmth but being on the surface for any length of time was also dangerous. Humans could fly over their machines and drop bombs onto careless Mers. The rocks provided some protection… but apparently not enough from curious eyes. 

The human kid came closer to the covered river and Drift stilled under the dirty surface. He couldn’t have heard anything from him? But no… the human youngling just dumped the contents of a bin into a chute leading to the river and slammed its cover shut. Cursed humans! At this klik, with dirt and refuse floating in the murky water around him, Drift could completely agree with the Elders – humans were abominable, no matter the size. They intentionally fouled the waters Mers lived in… and Mer magic defending the villages was hard put to keep the more serious contaminations out of the water to care about simple, household rubbish.

Drift, like all young Mers, while not yet warriors had to do his share of plastic-picking – humans seemed to be inordinately fond of making things out of this material and it was a horror in the water. Couldn’t be seen, couldn’t be smelled or sounded, it twisted into gills, cut into fins and killed fish, coral, crabs… from time to time, when their tribe collected enough to warrant a bit of a display, they balled up the collected plastic into a huge missile and one of the Elders transported the dripping, wet and filthy packet back into the middle of the human town, when the humans were out in abundance in the main square, so they might feel some measure of what it was to have a plastic bag try to suffocate one… 

Drift sommersaulted back and swam out of the filthy canal as fast as he could. There was nothing more to see or hear and he wanted to get rid of the itching filth on his scales and skin. Avoiding the traps he shot out into the clean seawater and shuddered as the cooler, but cleaner currents caressed his body and washed away the filth in an ugly, brown cloud dispersing around him. Diving deep the white-black mer sped up and shot towards the home coves secreted carefully on the seabed, deep in an underwater ravine that hid it from the humans’ scanners. Magic provided the rest of the disguise, though no humans dared to enter the deep ocean for quite some time. Still, they maintained the cover, all of the tribe remembering the times when they were routinely under attack, back in the height of the war…

“Drift!”

Another slender frame shot upwards, his colours flashing at him, making an impossibly fast twirl around the slowing Drift and slamming into him to hold the returning Mer in a tight embrace.

“Wing! You’re back!”

“Yeah, got back just an orn ago. Damn, but you stink. Been in the river again?”

Wing loosened his embrace and started picking at his scales with needle-sharp talons. Drift laughed – it tickled and Wing knew it – and slapped the white hands away. 

“I had to. There was a human kid in the cove – you know, the one we used to hang out in… anyway, I had to check if he saw me or not.”

“He did? Dai Atlas won’t be happy.”

“Yeah, I know. He will forbid us to go there again. But Wing, he was just a youngling and… he didn’t look bad like the older humans.”

Wing glanced back and sighed as they swirled around each other in the clean, dark water, hands reassuring themselves that it was really the shape they knew, they loved…

“They all grow up and learn to hate us, you know that, Drift.” Wing’s harmonics held sadness and resignation. The white Mer had his own memories, experiences that taught him to be ever vary of humans…

“He… he might not.”

“The adults will teach him to hate us. They always do. That’s why we are still fighting.”

“It’s so…”

Drift couldn’t find the words. He only knew that it felt sad. Humans were… so similar sometimes and that kid was… he was…

“Drift, you’re not drawn to him, are you? It’s not like you to… like humans!”

Wing swatted at his dorsal fin a little to call back his wandering attention and Drift twitched.

“What? No, of course not! Not that way! He’s interesting, though… all that flame-coloured hair and clothes, he looks like a… a… lionfish? Such a pretty little thing, so full of enthusiasm and little surprises.”

“Lionfish…” Wing stared at him with a small, sad smile on his lips. “When did you last see a lionfish? They polluted those habitats vorns ago…”

Drift sighed a shot of water out of his gills. He knew perfectly well that Wing was right – he, himself came from those warm, shallow seas, a survivor of his tribe that were among the first to fall under the deliberate contaminations from humans, early in the war along with all the fish, crabs, corals, everything that used to live there. Maybe that simile was not the most fortunate under the circumstances… or maybe that was exactly the reason why he liked to watch the colourful human kid. Wing nudged his drooping fin, his expression careful and understanding.

“Come. We should get back to the others and clean you properly. Forget the human kid.”

Drift nodded silently as the two Mers flipped around and headed home. Tired after hours of hard swimming Drift lagged a little behind Wing but tried to catch up for all his worth. Wing was the faster of the two of them but Drift could never accept that – in his former tribe he was the fastest and even after vorns it still galled to come second behind his friend-lover.

As they thought, Dai Atlas was not happy with their report or them sneaking out from the safe depths of the ravine to swim in the shallows and an unhappy Dai Atlas was a hard taskmaker. Drift was still picking rubbish the next decaorn, while Wing was forced to stay put in the healers’ cave and help them weave the protective magic; both activities being the one they hated the most. 

“My audials are ringing…” Wing groaned at the end of the endlessly long orn, while he tiredly helped Drift get clean. “I don’t know how they can do it orn after orn…”

Drift just grunted in answer. Besides dead tired he was absolutely filthy. He had to clean up something that looked like an oil spill from a drowned human flier and the stuff clung to his scales like crazy. Even with Wing helping him and with the special sponges it took them joors to make his tail look white again and it still itched.

“But at least I’m off tomorrow.”

Drift scowled at his mate. His own punishment for going to the shore and being seen by a human lasted longer than Wing’s who just snuck out the village.

“What will you do?”

“Patrol again. Dai wants us to check the whole shoreline again.”

“Be careful. If that kid told about me their leaders…”

They both knew the dangers. Once roused by a Mer sighting, the human soldiers were relentless and ruthless to pursue them. Even with the war cooling down as both sides basically gave up the shores of the seas, there were bloody skirmishes breaking out that claimed lives from Mers and Humans alike. 

“I will.”

Wing kissed him lightly and they quickly finished cleaning him… to enjoy far more pleasant activities before separated again.


End file.
